Morris Brown College (MBC), a prominent liberal arts institution in Atlanta, has announced an update to its COVID-19 precautions for the 2023 academic semester. The revised policy now includes a mask mandate for students and employees for the next 14 days of the term.
While the college already has a vaccine mandate in place, with medical and religious exemptions, the decision comes amid reports of COVID-19 cases elsewhere in the state’s student population. There are no reported cases of COVID-19 on MBC’s campus.
All students and staff will be required to wear masks on campus.
The mask mandate is one of several measures that the college has taken since the onset of the pandemic. Student events and gatherings have also been canceled, and the university is promoting physical distancing and limiting the size of private gatherings.
MBC also requires students to have their temperature checked upon arrival, and forces students to maintain social distancing and undergo contact tracing.
Mask mandates became heavily politicized during the COVID-19 pandemic, with conservatives questioning their utility, especially for children, and the legality of government mandated clothing items.
Courts generally sided with liberals, who claimed that masks promote public health and should be mandated during a pandemic.
Some worry that a new round of COVID-19 mandates, including lockdowns, may be on the horizon as new variants of the virus spread throughout the world.
Republicans generally maintain that the COVID-19 pandemic is in the past, due to widespread vaccines and therapeutics, and instead focus on its origins.
